


giant golden hand

by cashewdani



Category: Swimming RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s got that childish glint in his eyes that means things are going to at the very least get interesting. “We should just get like completely shitfaced and go look at this art. I’m not even fucked up right now and this looks insane.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	giant golden hand

**Author's Note:**

> Let's thank [TMZ for the pictures of Phelp's place](http://www.tmz.com/photos/2012/08/02/michael-phelps-condo-sold-inside-photos/images/2012/08/01/michael-phelps-house-sold-photos-1-jpg/), [the pictures of the exhibits that would have been on display in the fall of 2008](http://www.flickr.com/photos/markart/sets/72157607642710215/with/2904507661/), and Neenan, for making me go and experience [The Bling Universe that is the Visionary Art Museum](http://avam.org/bling-universe/index.shtml). Un'beta'ed. All mistakes are mine. Thanks, London Olympics 2012, you've made some things happen in my life.

You get a ton of mail at your place, or maybe you get a completely normal amount of mail, but you don’t do anything with it for weeks at a time and so it just seems like the most mail any human being has ever received. One or the other. Regardless, it’s just all piled up on your dining room table. And you’re pretty sure your mom and the lady who picked this table out thought you’d eat at least some of those tens of thousands of calories a day at it, but that has never in the history of this house been the use for this room. It’s just the place where your mail grows and you find your keys if you actually put them somewhere smart.

Until Ryan pushes in your front door, dropping his duffel and a still bulging bag of Cinnabuns, trying to untie his shoe with the hand that’s not pulling yours. Herman is running circles around you both, barking in a way that probably means he’s going to piss on the floor before you can get him outside.

“How was the flight?” you ask, because it seems like there should be some sort of conversation before Ryan’s got his hands down your pants, palming your dick. He’s still struggling with his left Nike.

He tells you, “Too long,” and you laugh, partially because you’re thinking about cocks, and because he stumbles over his shoelace. “The windows in the dining room just face the harbor, right? Like no one can see through them?”

You’d shown him a tour of the place over Skype when you’d moved in, months ago, and it seems insanely weird that he still remembers that. “I don’t think so.”

“God, you’ve got to start paying attention to the details,” he says, turning to look at you with that smile that lets you see seven of his teeth, and you know he didn’t shave before getting on the plane this morning, and if only this douchebag knew.

You lean in to kiss him because it’s been three weeks and two days since you left him in Gainesville and whatever, you’ll clean the carpet later if it comes to that.

With your fist grabbing the curls that are a little longer than the last time you saw him, he arches up against you, totally forgetting that he never did get that one red sneaker loose. 

The dog’s still barking. 

You want to find the spot that’s kind of Ryan’s throat, shoulder and chest all at once, the one that makes him say shit that is either so filthy it belongs on the internet or so sweet only a twelve year old girl would write about it in her diary. But this time, when you run your tongue over it, he just sighs out, “Jeah,” all bliss and fucking nonchalance and you can’t help it that you laugh until he shoves you back into the table, that pile of bills and catalogs and takeout menus falling on Herman’s back, finally sending him running for another room.

“What? Come on, man, it was funny.” You feel flushed.

“I wish you could see how stupid your stupid face looks when you come,” he says, annoyed, but you can see him running his finger over where your mouth just was.

“We’ll have to save that for your next place, where I’m sure you’ll have a classy as fuck mirror on the ceiling.”

He smirks, “You’re not as dumb as you look, Phelps,” and you punch him square in the chest. “That’s the best you got?”

It turns out it doesn’t matter what the windows in the dining room face, since you wind up blowing him on the floor anyway and you’ll be the one later with a bruise blooming on your side, but you’re pretty sure you won.

\---

You stay on the ground after you’re done, petting Ryan’s hair where he’s resting on your stomach. Your shirt is maybe around here someplace.

He’s going to look like the Cowardly Lion when you finally get up, and you wonder if he’s ever worn bows. He probably has, it’s more a question of just how many and how recently. You twirl a piece around your finger, the same way you used to with your own hair when you were a little kid and falling asleep.

It feels like the only place besides the pool you can be still is with Ryan, you don’t know what that is, but you’d be happy to lay here for hours as long as some part of him was touching you.

He apparently doesn’t feel the same, since he’s constantly shifting to reach a new envelope. “They’re going to turn your lights off if you don’t deal with this.”

“It’s on auto-pay.”

“So why are they sending you the bill?”

“I guess so I know how much I’m paying? I don’t know.”

Ryan rolls over, nipping you to the left of your belly button and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t get half hard over it. “We’ve got to get you a secretary or something.”

“You interested in the position?”

“Fuck no!”

And you want to maneuver him in some way, so you can ask, “What about this position? You interested in that?” and maybe come again before you get dinner ordered in, but he’s pulling his full weight on top of you to reach for yet another piece of mail.

Stomach to stomach, he says, “You missed something an eye sent you!”

You shove his shoulder, trying to get a full breath into your lungs. “What?”

“Look at the return address, it’s an eyeball.” He slips to sitting next to you, his bare ass on the hardwood even though his boxers are still only halfway down his thighs.

“It’s from the Visionary Art Museum. They’re just doing some new exhibit probably.” You go to throw it back on the table, but he snatches at your wrist before you get it much of anywhere.

“When an eyeball sends you an invitation, you respond, Mikey, I mean, seriously.” He opens up the brochure while you stroke up and down his spine, your own back still completely reclined. “Oh my God, can we please go to this place? It says it’s a speck in the bling universe! Jeah, we’re going.”

To be honest, you hadn’t thought about an itinerary for this trip at all beyond drinking Bohs on the couch, sex, and _Halo 3_. “That’s really what you want to spend a day doing?” 

He’s got that childish glint in his eyes that means things are going to at the very least get interesting. “We should just get like completely shitfaced and go look at this art. I’m not even fucked up right now and this looks insane.”

“Look at you being all cultured.”

“Fuck you, asshole, I bet they’re going to be begging for some of my stuff to put on the walls.”

“Well, if it looks as insane as you’re saying...” He bends down with a kiss to shut you up and he doesn’t need to know you’d say yes to pretty much anything he’d ask. Keep a little mystery. Like a fucking lady.

\---

It takes you three days to make it down there, one for each floor, because it seems like a much better idea to christen every surface of your place.

“I can’t believe you’re making us walk there you ADHD motherfucker.” He’s got his hands jammed in your Towson sweatshirt, hood pulled down so far you can barely see his eyes. “How can you still have excess energy after what I did to you on the stairs this morning?”

“I’m not the one that packed only shorts to come to Maryland, ON THE WATER, in October. Stop being a bitch.”

He maybe, honest to god, shivers. “Is this because I smoked the last of the joint just now or cause I made you run laps when you came to see me and I whupped your ass?”

“For the last time, it was the humidity. And you barely beat me.”

“Yeah, but I still did.” He smirks beneath the hood.

“Let’s see how you do without the home court advantage,” you say, jogging backwards.

Ryan’s already got his hands out, feet bouncing. “Oh you’re on, Phelps,” bolting down the pier, like he even knows where you’re going.

You let him think he’s going to win for a little bit, as a guest. But you’re definitely the one to get your hand on the mirrored bus outside first. And not just because Ryan stops short, staring at it, probably trying to reason out if there’s anyway to get the thing inside of his mouth.

\---

You’ve definitely seen the stuff outside the museum before, the bus and the egg and that giant hand looking like it’s going to pluck you right off the sidewalk, but you’ve never gone in. And with the way that Ryan is running his hand on every one of many shiny surfaces, you probably never will.

“If this is the kind of stuff they let you look at for free, can you even imagine how good the shit they have you pay for is?”

“Maybe there’s just a whole room of grills and shoes, like, a duplicate of your closet, for the public of Baltimore to enjoy.”

“Your city should be so lucky.” He goes to pet one of the rabbits on the nose. 

You wish you still had some weed and that smoking it in eye view of a basketball court with kids shooting hoops in it was appropriate. “I thought you were cold.”

“Yeah, but that was before you had me sprint my ass here. I’m a tourist, let me enjoy this.”

You look at Ryan’s flushed face, multiplied over and over in the jagged pieces of glass, and you really shouldn’t do what you know you’re going to.

You kiss his mouth, still tasting like that last toke you fought him over, with your eyes closed even though it might be nice to catch all the reflections.

He smells like you, in your clothes, and it makes you feel safe even though you’re being more reckless than you’ve ever been before.

\---

You’re sure there’s etiquette to being in a museum, stuff like not touching the art or saying it looks fucking stupid, but you don’t know if there’s a policy for what you’re supposed to do if you think you’re tripping balls.

Ryan is running around the rooms like he’s a child, his heavy footsteps thudding on the wooden floors, which is also probably frowned up. He nearly knocks over a statue with a face where it’s vag or cock is supposed to be. And praying mantis arms. And like beetles for more faces, because apparently this thing needs all of the faces.

“Are you sure your stash wasn’t laced with LSD or mushrooms or something?” A lot of the eyes seem to be following you as you try to get out of their way.

Ryan is apparently already much too preoccupied by the statue with the snake skeleton in it to hear you. “This looks exactly like my notebooks. They should definitely hang some of my shit in here. Did you see that maze thing? I’ve totally done mazes. And the cars? Even you can probably draw a better car than that.”

“I think they were trucks.” You’re not even sure though because there’s another thing with a face on its junk that looks like it’s exploding dolphins. “I don’t like this room. ‘Welcome to Wonder’ my fucking ass. More like welcome to your nightmares.”

Ryan comes over and palms your head, his hand feeling huge. “My nightmares don’t look anything like this. I mean, this shit is incredible. Someone made a dick out of telephone wire, ARE YOU SEEING THIS?!” He turns you so you’re looking at some bearded guy with a hairy chest, and yep, a pink dick, that looks like a whole bunch of paper clips strung together. “That’s art, man, jeah!”

His hand slips down to the back of your neck and squeezes, confidently, and you might just be seeing garbage strung together by a mental patient, but something about this is clearly inspiring him.

“God, I want to blow you right here,” he says, pulling you in to kiss your cheek with a loud smacking sound, before flitting off to the other room where, “Mike, there’s a robot!! Holy shit, it’s going to do something!” and it’s not like it’s the worst place you’ve ever been.

\---

The gift shop was always your favorite part of trips, and maybe it’s sad that you can remember that you got a stuffed polar bear at the National Zoo but not whether you actually saw any live ones there, but whatever. This store is basically just reinforcing your theory all over the place. Gift shops are awesome. It’s just a fact.

You’ve been digging around in a basket of plastic spiders for probably too long when something tickles your ear and you jump back, sending a whole bunch of them flying. Ryan’s there, laughing, of course, wearing the hot pink feather boa that freaked out your entire nervous system.

“Fuck you,” you say, trying to get your heartbeat under control.

He says, “I want to play a game,” picking up a parasol to twirl. “To really remember today. You’ll play a game with me?”

You tell him, “Jeah,” because you like how he looks when you say it.

“Okay, we can each spend up to five bucks on something for the other person. And it’s got be a surprise. And you’ve got to keep it.”

“Ry, I’m getting a little nervous you’re turning girly on me.”

He bats his eyelashes with the yellow ruffled umbrella propped on his shoulder. “Why Mr. Phelps, I certainly don’t know what you’re talking about. Now let’s go, five dollars, five minutes.”

“How will we know who wins?” you shout as he heads for the back room, and you wonder if it’s a problem that literally everything the two of you do has to be a competition.

He tells you to, “ Just shop!” which makes you nearly certain he already had something perfect in mind to suggest this.

Maybe he missed the giant flamingo sunglasses though, which make you think about Ryan, and that bar, the something Flamingo, that the two of you shot whiskey at in Gainesville until you had to take a cab home even though you walked there because Ryan wasn’t entirely sure of where his house was right then. The way you think about Ryan whenever you drive through Hampden and see the giant bird taking up the whole facade of a building, or the little plastic, shitty ones on people’s front lawns. How a weird looking stork can still get you kind of hard because of the way Ryan said it’s name, wet and booze soaked, into your face that one night.

“We went to the Flamingo,” he’s said, dragging out the word, “and now I want to fuck you, which is great, because that bird is pretty gay. For a bird.”

And you’d kissed him, forcing the two of you to slam into the door that he’d been struggling to open before the confession, and it was a really good time, from what you can remember.

You buy the sunglasses, bypassing the bikini ladies on some lighters, and $5 worth of sheriff badges, going to wait for him under the solar system in the hallway. He comes out a minute later without a bag, but a bulge in the pocket of your sweatshirt.

“I show you mine, you’ll show me yours?” he asks, with a waggle of eyebrows, and you might feel something in your guts, but maybe you’re just hungry.

You reach into the pocket, going slow, running your palm along his stomach before hitting something solid. Plastic. When you pull it out, it’s a scuba diving chicken nuggets figurine you’re pretty sure Whitney got in a Happy Meal when you were kids.

“It made me think of you,” he shrugs, looking a little embarrassed with his stupid too long hair in his face, and there’s that feeling again, the actually probably not hungry one. Then he shrugs, bravado coming back on strong, asking, “And what’d you get me?”

He of course immediately puts on the sunglasses, and high fives the girl at the ticket counter on the way out, wanting to test them in the glare off the bus.

You tell yourself you’re high and that’s why you want to hold his hand.


End file.
